[WEB4LIB] RE: Candidates for _Beyond Bookmarks: Schemes for Organ

[Leonard Will]

In article <A53F9D66ECB2D111A24C00805F5702940168B2FA at binnycexc001.cahner
s.com>, on Mon, 3 May 1999 at 07:25:06, Minkel, Walter (Cahners -NYC)
<URL: mailto:WMinkel at cahners.com> writes
>Dewey or LC are
>useful for items that cannot be searched by keywords, but why is it
>necessary, other than the fact that the books have call numbers, to sort Web
>sites that way?

A classified catalogue offers much more than just a "mark and park"
system for shelving books. The idea is to arrange access to information
resources in a logical and systematic sequence, so that related
materials are found together, even though you may not know the words
that have been used for indexing them. In a classified catalogue, a
single item may appear at more than one place, if it deals with more
than one topic - although if it is a book it can occupy only one place
on the shelf.

Alphabetical subject indexing terms can be used for specific retrieval,
but they are not very efficient for browsing: "animals" and "zoology"
are at opposite ends of the list; thesaural links between terms can help
to overcome this, but terms still need to be looked up separately. If
resources do not permit the allocation of terms from a controlled
vocabulary, then keywords from the text can be used, but these can be
rather hit-and-miss: see any Internet free-text search engine for
examples of the problem.

A classified list and an alphabetical list complement each other in the
same way as the contents list complements the index of a book. One gives
an overview of the field, while the other gives specific access. One is
a map, the other is a gazetteer. Both are needed.

Leonard Will

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